About

The field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) uses insights on how social, cultural, and political identities shape the way people interact with technologies. While North American and European researchers have been largely instrumental in growing what we know about the field, Asian counterparts contribute by exploring different research directions and problems, expanding the applications and potential of HCI research in Asian cultures and societies. Japanese researchers in particular have been pursuing interesting and unique research directions in interaction techniques and interactive systems. Due to its maturity, the Japanese HCI research community has already established well-regarded domestic conferences (“IPSJ Interaction” and “JSSST Workshop on Interactive Systems and Software (WISS)”) as well as journals, accepting very intriguing work with creative solutions on hard problems. However, Japanese researchers are often unable to have opportunities to present their work at international venues because the publication criteria is quite different. This is even a larger barrier for young researchers as they may not have sufficient experience in publishing and presenting their work at international conferences. The same can be said for other mature HCI communities in East Asia like China, South Korea and Taiwan. Despite their flourishing domestic HCI research, they still face challenges disseminating their work in bigger international venues.

On the other hand, researchers in the global south, like South and Southeast Asia, face a greater challenge of underrepresentation in these large venues despite tackling equally hard research problems. This is because of their smaller and nascent HCI research communities and limited financial and institutional support to share their works.

Thus, providing an opportunity of presenting latest research outcomes from Asia at CHI will benefit the whole HCI research community as well as Asian researchers who otherwise would not attend the conference. To this end, several batches of Asian researchers have jointly organized symposiums and region-specific workshops at CHI since 2015. These were started by the Japanese, Southeast Asian and Chinese communities and the timeline shows how this effort has progressed over the years with much success. However, despite consistent efforts in growing diversity in the main and specialized conferences, research from Asia are still under-represented.